Filed under: Democracy for All!, Justice, Leadership, Our World, Social/Economic Issues, Speak out! …
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Not surprisingly, Liberal officials are loving the publicity the leader is receiving from the national media. More importantly, local and regional media are getting to meet Mr. Ignatieff as the so-called Liberal Express rolls through small towns and communities across Canada. On Saturday, the National Post even devoted half of the coveted page three to [...] …
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The Edmonton Journal sounds off on discontent and Wildrosers hiding away their true ambitions. Mike Cummings of Edmonton writes to the Edmonton Journal… Wildrose’s True Colours The Wildrose Alliance has shown itself to be nothing but a group of flip-floppers who pretend to be on the cutting edge, but in reality are nothing more than talk. [...] …
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My beloved readers, yesterday was my last clinic day at the Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton. Tears. For real.It was a pretty good clinic. Pink Hat was out with her sad little one-limbed Jesus (why won't he heal himself?). I caught a glimpse of Crazy Legs, and the Holy Ghost was very vocal. And guess who else was there, for the first time (that I know of)? Father What-a-Waste, from the March for Life! You guys, what is he doing? He is so handsome and sweet. He told SL that if any of the other protesters started yelling or being aggressive, he was going to be very upset and disappointed. SL …
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Everyone would like to disbelieve Rick Hillier. That's understandable. He drove those horses a little harder than he should have. However, I have to agree with him on one point: Initial action reports are full of errors. That's a simple fact. Nothing coming off the battlespace is completely accurate. It can't be. The confusion is just too overwhelming.So, this report has more information, but it also has the eyewitness statement of one who was there."I was there and our boys were not killed by friendly fire," Corp. Jody Mitic wrote on Twitter. "Ask anyone from Charlie Company. Friendly fire …
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PERSONALHERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:Molly has a confession to make. I was a murderous little kid. Of course a lot of my detractors knew this all along. Back where I grew up in rural Saskatchewan it was considered something of a patriotic duty to wage perpetual and unrelenting war against the gophers and crows. I did my part, though I have to admit that other kids outdid me in sadistic ways to dispose of the cs and gs. What I specialized in was the eternal war against the insects. Well the crawling ones anyways. Most of the flying ones were exempt. I actually liked them.One of the residues of my …
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This broadcast is a couple of days old now, but in response to the continued bleating about how the simultaneous publishing of the Wikileaks war logs by the NYTimes, Spiegel, and the Guardian puts the lives of the troops and civilian informants/collaborators in danger, here is Guardian editor David Leigh explaining how Wikileaks and the three papers, together with the White House, avoided that pitfall. Assange has stated elsewhere that the month long collaboration between Wikileaks staff and the three papers was carried out in a room at the Guardian.Many other interesting issues discussed in …
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Oh yes, ol’ Stock Day has not only hit the height of stupidity, one really has to start being concerned about his mental health; I mean, really concerned. What he just came up with is just so disturbing.   His latest rationale for not wanting to maintain the mandatory long census form? If you are among the groups of people who are demanding this free info I have a question for you based on past ‘quizzes’. Do you think it is right that you can threaten your neighbour with jail time if she doesn’t tell you if she has mental issues or not? Or who does what chores in the …
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One of the Guardian series of stories based on the "War Logs" documents released by Wikileaks this past Sunday concerned a secretive unit of special forces known as Task Force 373. The NATO coalition has been using this unit to "to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial" from a list of targets known as Jpel. The Guardian identifies the unit's members as American troops drawn from the 7th Special Forces Group but it also suggests that there might be similar units from allied countries. ... the leaked war logs reveal details of deadly missions by TF 373 and other units hunting …
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I'm clearly running out of ideas for titles. Still, any excuse to post a Rolling Stones tune works for me:It's very much as if parliament never went on vacation here in Canada. The Tories are still attacking and doing their best to smear Iggy who is having none of it. He seems to have a learned a thing or two in the past year. The Conservatives sent out a missive declaring Liberal, Jennifer Pollock’s comment on Twitter to be a smear of the entire Calgary Police force.The Tories memo blathers on with the same kind of talking points they have employed since Iggy was made leader …
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Been a coupla months since the bards at Canadian Cynic went on holiday. An aeon in blogtime. Since then we've had fighter debacles, Census scandals, emerging RCMP scandals, G8/20 scandals, and 90 000 scandalous documents from the big dusty place across the sea. And some others that don't immediately leap to mind.There's no blog in the blogsphere that quite captures the essence of the all that political muppetry with same incisive wit and snark as the the CC crew, but they are nowhere to be found save for one brave soul making a twitter stand. But that's just not the same.Just sayin' maybe …
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Stockwell Day. …
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Go read BCL.Stockwell Day MP PC, asserts that that long form Census data allows your find out personal information about your neighbour, such as whether they are Jewish. As to why he said Jewish one can only speculate, but the fact remains his assertion is false. It is beyond reasonable to pressume that someone with Day's position damn well knows how census data is handled, therefore suggesting that some might somehow be able to find their neighbour's responses to the long form or short form, is a complete and intentional misrepresention of reality. …
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Reckless! Simply Reckless, I tell you! Iggy! How could even suggest such foolish ideas as to attempt to bring Canadians together!  Yes, to the Harpercons, concepts like National Unity are “disturbing trends”.   “Michael Ignatieff and his team recklessly throw around the term ‘national unity,’ ” the Tories charge. “If Ignatieff hadn’t spent 34 years away from Canada he might understand that elevating policy differences into ‘national unity’ issues is playing with fire.” Yes Iggy, that is indeed disturbing.  Why, before you know it, such radical things might …
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Getting ready to blog here and wanted to post something that might be thought provoking and of use in the meantime. Have a look at Annie Leonard's, The Story of Bottled Water: …
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The NEW YORK TIMES has a report by Steven Greenhouse, "Pressured, Nike to Help Workers in Honduras", about the successful efforts of US college students to force Nike to do the right thing. Moral suasion was ineffective, but when the students had their colleges buy their sweats elsewhere, the kind folks at Nike had a change of heart. I don't buy Nike.Facing pressure from universities and student groups, the apparel maker Nike announced on Monday that it would pay $1.54 million to help 1,800 workers in Honduras who lost their jobs when two subcontractors closed their factories.Nike agreed to …
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Yes,  for not only those on the fence centrists and those who think Steve has left his Reform and NCC thinking behind and  willing to entertain a Sweater vest Steve majority, but also those progressives who are still willing to believe that a few years of a Stevie majority wouldn’t be so terrible or weren’t so willing to believe that Stevie Spiteful would remove all social safety nets if given the kingdom, in spite of  all recorded statements (available here, here and here, to refresh your memory)  he made over the years in his hay day of Reform Party and NCC,  Blogging …
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One of the Wikileaks war logs released yesterday contained a friendly fire report filed by the 205th RCAG U.S. military unit which states four Canadian soldiers were killed and seven other Canadians and an interpreter were wounded on Sept. 3, 2006, when a fighter jet dropped a guided bomb on a building they occupied during the second day of Operation MEDUSA. [bracketed explanations mine].At 030414Z Sept 06 received SAF[small arms fire] & RPGS from sawtooth building. returned fire 1x GBU[Guided Bomb Unit] dropped on it.Sawtooth building is heavily damaged. only 4x sections remain standing. …
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The CBC report.The Canadian military is rejecting a report released by WikiLeaks that suggests four Canadian soldiers who died in September 2006 in Afghanistan were killed by friendly fire from U.S. forces. The military maintains the four soldiers died in combat with the Taliban. The press release issued by Canadian Expeditionary Force Command on 3 September, 2006.Four Canadian soldiers were killed today at approximately 8:50 a.m. Kandahar time as they fought to drive Taliban fighters from a region west of Kandahar City. These casualties occurred on the second day of Operation Medusa, a …
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Did you hear? A denier has denied climate change! Shocking isn’t it? Well, no not really. In fact it is entirely predictable, and hardly worth a blog post. If only I had the skills of a professional spin doctor, then I could turn this into something news worthy. For example look how Marc Morano spun this: Left-wing Env. Scientist [Denis Rancourt] Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement Wow! Now that is worth writing about, or rather it would be if there were any truth to this statement (ok even then it wouldn’t really matter). As Kevin Grandia at DeSmogBlog points out: Rancourt has been …
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INTERNATIONAL LABOUR BANGLADESH:SUPPORT BANGLADESHI WORKERS:Bangladesh...a country whose main claim to "fame" is flooding and death during ever recurrent typhoons. Bangladesh...a country much of which may become unlivable in the not too distant future due to rising sea levels. Bangladesh...a country born out of a brutal civil war and the locus of what may be the most naked class struggle in the world.The heart of this struggle is the garment industry which employs about 1.8 million people and accounts for about 80% of the country's export value. Everybody and his dog's socks have signed up …
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Click through to the DND website today and the first visual you get is the Minister of National Defence, Peter MacKay, smiling back at you - wearing a Canadian Forces CADPAT TW uniform. It's been that way all weekend after MacKay participated with a Canadian military team in the Nijmegen Four Days Marches. Except that he didn't participate in the entire march; he only showed up for the last day. How that fits with the regulations established by Stichting DE 4DAAGSE is beyond me.Last week Boris pointed out, not only the danger involved in this visual, but the shameless, self-serving political …
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Oh, this ad was just darling. It’s an attack ad mimicking the anti-Ipod fanaticism ad from a while back turned into a new, more political form against the Wildrose Alliance. A bit of caution, though, before watching it: there’s a bit of swearing in the original and, true to form, it has been carried on to [...] …
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Case and point: Ezra Levant and Stephen Taylor frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of bad apples in Calgary’s police force. Calgary West Liberal Party of Canada candidate Jennifer Pollock tweeted a comment a few days ago about acknowledging problems with Calgary’s police force. The offending tweet is at the bottom of the [...] …
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Bump! Movable Type currently isn't allowing anyone to sign in to comment. Nor is it allowing anonymous comments. Will investigate after coffee. Update: Comment sign-in is working again. I can haz mor coffee now? …
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Lindsay Stewart does this to me too. The internets. We all know what they lead to. Coffee. …
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 I don't understand how this could happen. The Trentonian reports that a 20 year old autistic Middleton, Pennsylvania, man, living in a residential facility was found dead in the back of a hot van. He had attended an outing with three other residents and two counsellors, each counsellor responsible for only 2 residents. How could a person forget and leave one of only two persons in their care in a hot van? The matter is under investigation but what could possibly explain this result? I just don't understand. "Police detectives are investigating the tragic death of an autistic …
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Sorry for the delay in posting. SATCOM fail. …
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First it was Statistics Canada, now uh oh. Senior RCMP members have complained about Commissioner William Elliott to some of the highest levels of the federal government on two separate occasions in the past seven days, the CBC has learned. The complainants, possibly as many as 10, include some of the force's top officers, including deputy commissioners Tim Killam and Raf Souccar. They have accused Elliott of being verbally abusive, close-minded, arrogant and insulting. One complaint described Elliott, who became the first civilian to head the Mounties in July 2007, in a rage, throwing …
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One of the Wikileaks war logs released yesterday contained a friendly fire report filed by the 205th RCAG U.S. military unit which states four Canadian soldiers were killed and seven other Canadians and an interpreter were wounded on Sept. 3, 2006, when a fighter jet dropped a guided bomb on a building they occupied during the second day of Operation MEDUSA. [bracketed explanations mine].At 030414Z Sept 06 received SAF[small arms fire] & RPGS from sawtooth building. returned fire 1x GBU[Guided Bomb Unit] dropped on it.Sawtooth building is heavily damaged. only 4x sections remain standing. …
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When I first wrote about Laughlin’s essay What the Earth Knows, I focused entirely on the foolishness of equating the survival of the earth with the survival of human civilization, and that the phrase Save the Planet was never meant to be taken literally. But I missed Laughlin’s contradiction. Thankfully Friends of Gin and Tonic didn’t: On one hand: Carbon dioxide from the human burning of fossil fuel is building up in the atmosphere at a frightening pace, enough to double the present concentration in a century. This buildup has the potential to raise average temperatures on the earth …
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As a taxpayer, I sure hope the publicly funded  Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) isn’t paying anchor Tony Parsons a huge amount of cash! Because in the current  tour-de-ratings  (there are no real ratings WARS locally any more), the 72-year-old veteran isn’t even close to donning  the yellow leader’s jersey … the one he used to wear years, and decades ago. For news [...] …
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Take it away, Steve V.Today's release of ninety thousand confidential documents on Afghanistan by Wikileaks was the subject of today's appearance by Hawn. These documents are quite damaging, painting a bleak picture of the mission in Afghanistan. With that in mind, note Hawn's comments, wherein he tries to fluff off the documents:"A lot of them are dated, so it's really information that might make a good story but isn't that relevant to what is happening today. You know, it needs to be fairly immediate information to have a huge impact"That's right, like other mission defenders, …
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At a "media availability" he called this morning, Taliban Larry was blindsided with questions on the publication of the Wikileaks war logs. Echoing U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones, Cannon said :"Our government is concerned obviously that operational leaks could endanger the lives of our men and women in Afghanistan."Cannon then went on to repeat several times that the "leaked American documents" have "nothing to do with Canada."Ok then.Asked by the G&M if the leaks indicate the government has "misled the Canadian public", Lawrence replied that they have been very "transparent" …
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On the Wikileaks:"Our government is concerned obviously that operational leaks could endanger the lives of our men and women in Afghanistan,"On the Taliban, 142 Canadian deaths since the year his government called the NDP leader "Taliban Jack":“We encourage a reconciliation process that is inclusive of all Afghans, no matter their ethnicity” Yeah, I thought so. …
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Here is the latest sunshine the Kory clan had to pump today: No sooner was the sanitizer flying off the shelf than we received a harsh letter from Liberal MP David McGuinty — brother of Ontario’s Pinocchio Premier — taking us to task for the tone of our critique. “Maybe your newspaper(s) should give Ignatieff’s bus tour a chance instead of writing it off before it starts,” wrote McGuinty. “What’s required is a little less anger and a lot more journalism.” Really? For here’s McGuinty’s assessment of the raison d’etre of …
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Julian Assange on "the real story" of Wikileaks release of 91,000 classified Afghan war documents from 2004 to 2009 to The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel."This is the story of the war since 2004. Like most of the accidents on the road are the result of cars not of buses, most of the deaths in this war are the result of the every day squalor of war not the big incidences."Among other disclosures : the US gives Pakistan $1-billion a year to help fight the "insurgency" in Afghanistan but these reports indicate that the Pakistani spy service ISI, which works in concert with the CIA, …
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Monday's are as good to me as any other day. For my radio show it usually means I have way more stories than I'm able to get to in 2 hours which is strangely kind of of fun. So of course the controversy over the census is still ongoing and the Conservatives continue to keep digging which is okay with me. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says ask Canadians to fill out a long census form for the good of the country and they'll rush to grab their blue or black ballpoint pens - he failed to mention all the fairies and elves that assist in this magical effort but you can assume they're part of …
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